


moon dragon

by Allegory



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Fluff, Japanese Shiro (Voltron), Korean Keith (Voltron), M/M, big magical artifacts and backstabbing galore, keith is an emperor, keith is bitter and sexy at it, people are killed, shiro undercovers as a pleasure slave, war happens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-08 22:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11091249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegory/pseuds/Allegory
Summary: Keith holds up his hand and the soldiers immediately cease their return. "Show his face."The soldiers yank at a lock of hair that covers a chunk of the captive's face. He let out a small grunt; a scar is visible now where his paint had peeled, a horizontal mark across his cheek. Blood rushed through Keith's veins and a smile that Hunk had once described, for his lack of penchant for euphemisms, as cruel, vicious even. The look that Keith bore when victory was in his grasp, when he spoke orders that murdered innocents and razed entire villages, entire nations."The dog's son, Shirogane Takashi. What luck!"





	1. Chapter 1

The main holding of the gungjeon is rife with a thousand smells. Pulled pork dumplings, sizzling pots of broth and fried glass noodles are brought in to the emperor's hall, lined upon a long table occupied by the emperor's company. Cause for celebration permeates through the airy banter of the nobility, lacking its usual, thick consistency. A server carries soju to the emperor, sitting upon his throne with idle fascination for the chatter of his subjects. The war is over at last, and it is not without the leadership of his highness that the streets are paraded by lights, sacks of grains are being distributed to the poor, and they are here filling their bellies.

"Your mind seems to wander," says a large man with the audacity to omit honorifics. He sits next to the emperor, a guard dog almost, save they are positioned far too close to be mere allies. The emperor swings one leg over the other and pours soju into a cup for his childhood friend. A ring on his pinkie shimmers, the emblem of a coiling silver dragon, obsidian in its jaws.

"I see little point to this," the emperor replies stiffly. His food is untouched; this is the sceond time a kitchen aid has refilled it for him. His friend has better appetite, expected after all the riding and manslaughter. The emperor would admit that their enemies had put him in a knot with their tricks. Except he wouldn't, because the moment the Japanese had declared war on him, he had known the outcome, known it to be the same as all his previous conquests.

"I should like to retire soon, General Garrett. It seems that this might carry on forever, lest I command otherwise."

"No problems with that," Hunt Garrett mumbles, washing down the meats with the bitter wine. The emperor watches with a little smirk across his face, amused by Hunk's easy attitude, the simplicity of his pleasure. He finds himself puzzled often by the stark contrast between them, despite being fathered by the same man.

Emperor Keith Kogane leans back on his throne and gazes out of the tall windows, the dreary indolence of his life. Save playing the dangjeok, there is little in the way of entertainment that he has not tired of. With the fall of the Japanese Empire and the Takashi Dynasty, the absence of the Monguls and the Russians tied up in the European wars, Keith forsees dull days ahead, processing the woes of his subjects, for those seem to never end.

Time floats by as Keith waits for a good moment to call the celebration to an end. In the public eye he maintains this respectable, flawless image, the perfect emperor, so very different from the one who sits upon the throne bobbing his foot up and down, impatience in his gritted teeth, the low grunts and sighs that escape his lips that Hunk attempts to erase with stories of his unit's conquests on the field. It only makes Keith pine for the blade, as he recalls the disappointment when his mother had disallowed him from training as a child. Keith was taught early that his mind had to be sharper than his sword. Up to this day he resents the family tradition with a childish petulance.

At a point the chatters have waned enough that Keith determines it is time to retire. He is about to stand when a gong sounds in the distance and the sound of hooves against beaten loam echo in the proceeding silence. A trio of guards enter the hall. The last two have a captive locked tight in their arms. Protocol and procedure defied, Keith finds himself awake for the first time since nightfall.

"Pardon our interruption, Jeonha," a female soldier steps forward, flustered and clearly scraped from a tussle. She bows before glancing back at the captive whose eyes are glued to the floorboards, an expression of consternation on his face. "We caught this man floundering through the kisaeng houses."

His heritage cannot be betrayed, no matter how he might've attempted to conceal it. Under thick downs of white paint and glitter is the characteristic facial features of a Japanese. Who has managed, somehow, to skirt through the security checks that Keith had so meticulously planned and implemented. There must be others. If not, what does a man think he can accomplish alone, in enemy territory?

"Closer," the Jeonha's voice cut through the hall. He sits motionless on his throne, no sign of interest in the hard planes of his face. They had called him too young, too unprepared, upon his coronation. Now the bare thought of it is blasphemy.

The soldiers bring the captive man forth. The hanbok he wears slides off his shoulder, revealing thickly corded arms, the view of a broad chest and strong shoulders, maybe even rival to General Hunk's. In spite of these endowments he does not struggle. Keith could tell several things upon these few moments of meeting him; well-trained from his musculature, intelligent, knowing he had little to gain from writhing in the belly of the enemy. Perhaps a personal vendetta as well; even now, shoved to the ground by the soldiers, the man's gaze burns through the carpets. He doesn't yield to Keith's eyes, to the man who had commanded the mass slaughter of his people.

"This is your chance," Keith says in his dry voice. "Confess your sins and I may let you live."

No words. The man is breathing hard, fabric shifting upon his form. Keith notices the darkened patch just under his waist. His complexion is pallor from paint, not the wound.

"Nothing. Send him to the executioner, then," Keith rolls his head. This man's presence simply means more work for him. He would have to detain his strategists and generals for the night and formulate a plan to cleanse their country of the Japanese bugs. They seemed not to die when squashed. Keith let out a small sigh as he turned around, back to the aristocrats who had recommenced their chatter.

"One of the Takashi's."

"Pardon?" Keith halts. He turns to General Hunk, squinting by then.

Keith holds up his hand and the soldiers immediately cease their return. "Show his face."

The soldiers yank at a lock of hair that covers a chunk of the captive's face. He let out a small grunt; a scar is visible now where his paint had peeled, a horizontal mark across his cheek. Blood rushed through Keith's veins and a smile that Hunk had once described, for his lack of penchant for euphemisms, as cruel, vicious even. The look that Keith bore when victory was in his grasp, when he spoke orders that murdered innocents and razed entire villages, entire nations.

"The dog's son, Shirogane Takashi. What luck!" No longer could Keith keep the excitement out of his voice. "Have him cleaned up. I want him in my chambers, appropriately dressed. He is not to be harmed."

Shiro curses under his breath in a foreign tongue. By then Keith is cackling maniacally, his good image forgotten, exhilaration tickling his bones. He would have kissed Hunk then and there had all ninety-one nobles not been there to witness and recount the story. Instead Keith slaps him on the shoulder, a well-intended gesture that hurt more than it should've coming from his scrawny build.

"What will you do to him?" Nervousness seeps through the general's voice. He's already regretting his keen sense of sight and honest tongue.

"Nothing good, I assure you," Keith laughs, drunk more on his thoughts than the soju. He watches the Takashi dragged out the way a lion would stalk its prey. Nothing good will come of this.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The emperor stops in the hallway of the living quarters. He gazes out of the windows with longing, something distant in his eyes. The water ripples as a pond skipper hops out of a patch of nettles. Keith stills, recalling how he'd sat by the nettles at the crack of dawn, scratching the mosquito bites on his legs and mottling his tanned skin in blood and scabs. He'd sit right behind an peach tree so that no one could see him from the palace and all who took residence in the gungjeon would run amok like headless chickens in their search for him.

The people during his mother's reign were steeped in poverty and came up with many names for his affinity of the outdoors. The disappearing prince, the feral prince, and at no one time did his mother have their tongues cut off for such affront. Keith closes his eyes and sucks the crisp air through his nose. Satin of his uniform brushes against the back of his neck as he continues towards his chambers, burying the reminiscence, an image of his mother's frazzled black hair.

When the doors are opened for him, Keith sees that the captive is already prepared for him. The paint had been washed off his face- the look of the kisaeng, in spite of their sultry status among his people, was not one a Japanese scum was worthy of. The Takashi kneels with his arms locked in front of him by a board of hardwood, splintered, a caution worthy of the man's physique. His scar is lit by a single candle flickering on a desk near the bed. There are no windows in the room, no form of cooling or heating. The air is clammy, boxed in.

Keith walks straight to his closet, ignoring the captive's presence completely. The soft whispers of fabric fill the distance between them as he changes out of formal wear, opting for a simplistic gown of maroon silk. It highlights his upbringing, sheltered from the front line of battle. Keith lights another candle and carries it atop a bronze lid, shuffling towards his prisoner. He squats in front of Shiro, flashing a key seemingly out of thin air. Keith makes quick work of the lock. Shiro's eyebrows knit and his muscles tense but he refrains from touching Keith, much less launch himself at him as past captives tended to. It would seem so easy, after all. The emperor is slim and weak and makes no effort to conceal it.

“You wish to play games with an emperor?” Keith asks in Japanese. _Know your enemy_ had been the first commandant his tutors had instilled in him as a boy. Growing up, he had spoken their language with greater fluency than his own. He observes surprise unravel on the prisoner's face; his lilt is flawless, refined like a blade. No blade better than tongue and teeth.

This is something his prisoner is aware of, for he maintains his silence. Keith figures that this is the sort of man who would not break to interrogation, as expected, of a Takashi. But Keith's patience runs dry. He places the candle on the floor and stands.

“Rise.”

Shiro submits to this command, the lock of white hair concealing the right side of his face yet again. Keith steps back, holding his arms behind his back. The soldiers had put him in rags and a multitude of scars show on his dusty skin. The skin under his dewy eyes are gray with exhaustion and Keith knows he hasn't had a night's rest in weeks; his gaze fails to settle on a single spot for more than a few seconds. His breathing is labored and the confusion is setting in no matter how he tries to mask it. He might faint rather soon. But Keith doesn't think so.

“Strip.”

Shiro blinks, not so quick to comply the second time.

“Well? How else will I verify that you don't have a weapon in there?”

It's a preposterous statement, but Keith gets what he wants when the man replies for the first time. “I would have used it by now.”

His voice is dry and crackled, the way Keith remembers his mother's skin. He smells like mud and perfume at the same time, which isn't far off from his how his mother used to smell after long nights riding in the woods, slipping back into the palace at dawn. Some days Keith would catch her by his post at the peach tree. Most days he didn't.

“And I ought to slit your tongue off for your insolence,” Keith answers daintily, like he was born slitting tongues, which wouldn't be far from the truth if his half-brother has any say in it. “Yet here we are, inches apart, almost lovers in the night's embrace.”

Shiro flinches, his face scrunching. The mere thought of it is worse than death.

“Go on then.”

Shiro doesn't respond for a long time before he finally obliges. The dignity he loses from stripping will be much less than if he tests more of the emperor's vile words. He takes off his cotton tunic. The candle watches him as intently as Keith does, his muscles flexing in its orange light. The scars are worse than what Keith had expected. He's almost a tad impressed; Shogun Zarkon's reputation truly shines through.

“They didn't bother with your wound.” It sounds unusually soft- very wrong. Keith glares at Shiro when he says, erasing any idea that he had the slightest concern for his well-being, “You truly are a hideous beast.”

The blank slate of his expression tells Keith that this isn't the first time he's received this comment. Whatever he'd been hurt by, it's not a surface wound. They've stuck bandages on him but little else; it's not like the palace soldiers and servants to stray like this. They know these interrogation sessions are how Keith assesses people, his and the nation's enemies, with intimacy, and that the prisoners' lives cost just as much as their own should they die before Keith gives the command. Keith frowns, biting the inside of his cheek. The Shogun has created enough chaos in the realm that his servants would even disobey him, just to get back at this man.

Shiro puts his hand on the sash around his waist when Keith turns, gown flowing behind him. “That's enough. I have little need to see what knife lies beneath there.”

He suspects a lesser man might blush and splutter, but Shiro is soundless behind him. Keith walks out his room and calls for the handmaids.

“Fix his wound and give him hospice in the spare rooms down the east wing. Have guards stationed at all times- I expect him to be treated as a guest.”

“Yes, Jeonha. At once.”

Shiro follows the handmaids willingly out of the room. Keith leans back on the wall by the door as he leaves, his elbows crossed. Given the time, he figures this might even become interesting.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really ought to be focusing on exams (gotta stop talking, start doing...) so I'm going to (try) and put this on hold till the 29th. Thanks for sticking round though, and I hope you'll continue to! <3


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